and for president obama. for the last 30 years, i have been writing about the distance between the american dream and american reality. i have seen it from the inside and from the outside. i grew up as a blue-collar kid. my parents struggle. often unsuccessfully tried to make ends meet. i have seen it as an adult, visiting the ninth ward after katrina in new orleans. meeting folks at food pantries of all among the united states who work daily to help our struggling citizens through the hard times we have been suffering. the american dream and an american reality. i vote tomorrow -- our book tomorrow is the one way we get to determine the distance in that equation. tomorrow we get a personal hand in shaping the kind of america what our kids to grow up in. i am a husband and a dad. lovely wife is here with me. we got three kids, grown-up, going out into the world. i'm 63. patty is much younger. but we both lived through some galvanizing moment in american history. we lived through the civil- rights movement. th